Category: Articles
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Mangled Memory: Remembrance of the Nazi Regime in the German Democratic Republic
Cover photo: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Berlin, Palast der Republik — um 1990 — 2” / CC BY-SA 4.0 By Aviva Gomes-Bhatt From 1949 until 1990, Germany was divided into the Western Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the Eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR). Ideologically separated by the proverbial Iron Curtain, each state had to grapple with reconstruction and usher itself…
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Historical Revisionism in Russian State Media: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Nostalgia and Impacts Collective Memory
Photo: Direct Line with Vladimir Putin. Photo courtesy of www.kremlin.ru. No changes were made. View the license here By Ruty Korotaev “One is nostalgic not for the past the way it was, but for the past the way it could have been. It is this past perfect that one strives to realize in the future.”…
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Deconstructing Europe’s East-West Divide Through Abortion Legislation
March in support of abortion rights, Łódź October 2nd 2016. Photo: Zorro2212/Wikimedia Commons. No changes made. View the license here. By Ashley Renz Introduction In September 2021, in the southern Polish town of Pszczyna, a 30-year-old woman named Izabela died due to fatal complications in the 22nd week of her pregnancy. Izabela’s fetus lacked amniotic…
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Revolution under the Shadow of the State: Organized Crime in the Soviet Union
Moscow’s Red Square during the Soviet era. Photo: daves_archive_1/Flickr. No changes made. View the license here. By Mike Shirley Introduction “I have no mother and no father. There is only the code, the vory v zakone code.” – Nikolai Luzhin, Eastern Promises[1] In 1971, Voldemar Mirkin, an antiques dealer in the Soviet Union’s thriving black market, came…
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The City of the Dead Confronts the City of the Living: Mostar’s Partisan Memorial Cemetery as ‘lieu de mémoire’
Cover photo: Partisan Memorial Cemetery, Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Photo: leiris202/Flickr. No changes made. View the license here. By Nikolai Ranko Duffield Introduction Located in a valley between the Hum and Velež mountains, a city of stone sits idly, intersected by the mighty blue Neretva, which flows quietly through the centre. Frequently listed as a…
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The Voices of a Few: Women in the Gulag
Shack from Gulag- Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. Photo: Marcin Szala/Wikimedia Commons. No changes made. View the license here. By: Julia Maria-Xavier The Stalinist era saw millions of people caught within the penal system, whether in prisons, labour camps, forced labour colonies, or exile, and millions more who bore the traumatic experience of being…
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The Effects and Influence of “Global Socialism” and the Revolution of 1956 on the events of 1989 in Hungary
Title Photo: Gabor B. Racz Hungarian Revolution. Photo: Gabor B. Racz/Wikimedia Commons. No changes made. View the license here. By: Bailey Campbell Introduction The events of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe left a lasting impact in the region. As they affected several countries, many felt the impacts of these events in distinct ways. Contrary…
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Nectar of the State-Owned Cooperative: A Commentary on Hungarian Wine’s Stagnation and Revitalization
Title Photo: Hétszőlő vineyards in Tokaj, Hungary. Photo courtesy of Jerzy Kociatkiewicz/Wikimedia Commons. No changes made. View the license here. By: Ben Marshall The Latin saying “vinum regnum, vinum rex,” or “wine of kings, king of wines,” is a phrase which is commonly attributed to the French King Louis XIV, and it is in no…